Saturday, May 26, 2012

Shrugging in France

I found this to be an interesting story about French entrepreneurs leaving the country (haussant les épaules as it were). In my opinion, the story does a good job of highlighting the spiritual attacks on wealth creators, as much as the material ones (i.e. taxes).

It serves as a good reminder of what happens when we fail to practice the virtue of justice, particularly the aspect of not only financially rewarding the good, but also of praising and esteeming it.

Not because of President-elect Francois Hollande’s pledge to boost taxes; rather for what Hollande’s victory says about how wealth is viewed in France, the entrepreneur said.

“What’s really driving my departure is the fact that I don’t share the values that emerged during the election, the rejection of ambition and success,” he said in an interview. “It’s part of France’s difficult relationship with money, but it has reached a new level. Even if it’s utopian, I need to believe for me and my descendants that the sky is the limit.”

France, the fifth-richest country and home to some of the world’s wealthiest people, including LVMH Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton SA Chief Executive Officer Bernard Arnault, doesn’t celebrate its affluent. Hollande, a Socialist who once said “I don’t like the rich,” and who plans to slap a 75 percent tax on income of more than 1 million euros ($1.29 million), reinforces the sentiment that in France to be rich is not glorious.

“Hollande is using the 75 percent tax as a symbol to convey certain values through stigmatization,” Le Febvre said.

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Ideas cannot be fought except bymeans of better ideas. The battleconsists not of opposing, but ofexposing; not of denouncing but of disproving; not of evading,but of boldly proclaiming a full,consistent and radical alternative.
-- Ayn Rand